Still Waters
by Sarasusamiga
Summary: Shizuka swims and thinks. Takes place after Battle City, BattleShip, Noa and Alcatraz arcs.


Disclaimer: At no time in recorded or oral history has Yu-Gi-Oh! or its characters constituted the intellectual property of this author, nor is it ever likely to do so. Said author, however, is making free with them for her own amusement.  
Author's Note: Shizuka - centric.  
Title: Still Waters  
Rating: PG  
Category: General (introspecti - fic)  
Pairings: Nope.  
Summary: Shizuka swims and thinks. Takes place after Battle City, BattleShip, Noa and Alcatraz arcs.  
Warnings: Tiny hint of shounen ai.  
Spoilers: Nothing critical.

* * *

**Still Waters**

She floats and dreams, giving small occasional kicks to keep herself from sinking. Even now that her sight's been restored, the pool remains her refuge: a place free from the screech of traffic, a place to which her mother cannot object.

Turning her head slightly, she shifts her gaze from the patchwork of fluorescent lights in the ceiling to the windows set high in the wall. The sky is blue, very bright.

_They're probably in America by now._

For a moment longing takes her like a cramp; she breathes deeply, kicks again.

Her eyes flick back to the ceiling. Deliberately she switches her thoughts to cram school, to the stacks of exercise books waiting on her desk at home. Since she regained full sight, her mother has been pressing her to catch up on the time she missed while in hospital—and, more, to make up for the steep decline in her school performance that occurred as her condition worsened.

Kick. Kick.

Her life had come gently unraveled: some unknown force tugged at one single thread—her sight—and the fabric of her daily existence simply fell apart around it. The only constant was her mother's stern, anxious presence—that, and her brother's letters. They were riddled with mistakes, dotted with multiple exclamation points and question marks, full of his bounding spirit. Even through the disapproving tones of her mother's delivery, she could hear his voice in those letters.

She remembered noticing the change in Brother's letters. Shortly after his first mention of his new friend Yuugi, his bright vagueness about the details of his life transformed into excited, impassioned specifics. DuelMonsters…the Millennium Puzzle…Duelist Kingdom...Kujaku Mai…Kaiba Corporation…

* * *

It took a deal of pleading before Mother allowed her to make the video for Brother. 

She focused her brightest smile toward the gray smudge that was a school friend's camera. Even though she'd thought the whole message through beforehand, it came out sounding funny; Shizuka wished she could be in Domino to hear Brother's reaction. Maybe he'd send her a tape back—at least, that was her hope. Or maybe, just maybe, he'd come to see her.

Instead, what she got was a week or so of no response, followed by a phone call. It was Mother who picked it up. "Katsuya," she said into the phone, in the tone that meant she'd locked away all feeling. Then, as Shizuka leapt to her feet and came running to stand beside her: "Th-that's impossible. If you're joking, I'll—"

Mother listened some more, then abruptly held the receiver out to Shizuka. "Talk to your brother," she said, and brushed past her daughter.

_Mother, crying?_

For a moment, Shizuka almost forgot the phone in her hands. Then she remembered, and cried delightedly, "Brother?"

* * *

The slow onset of blindness had depressed Shizuka—but she faced the operation with pure dread. Quite simply, she'd never prepared herself for the possibility, never expected the money to materialize. Yet within the month after Brother's call she was in the hospital, a slot having magically appeared in the renowned surgeon's schedule. 

_Brother is coming. _She clung to the thought. _He'll see me through this._ If she focused hard enough on his rough, affectionate voice, on the memory of that phone call, she could relax her hands on the covers, could listen to her mother's fretfulness without snapping.

But he didn't come. And the clock ticked above her bed, and her mother's voice grew frantic, and the doctor's visits to the room ("Are we ready to proceed _yet_?") briefer and testier. Her stomach swirled with fear and treacherous disappointment. _You're not the irresponsible nothing Mother says you are. Show me you aren't, Brother! _

By the time the operation was supposed to take place, she had locked everyone out of her room. When she'd had the idea she thought it would make her feel more powerful, safer—instead it made her feel dark and cold and alone. Outside, Mother was begging the irate specialist to wait a little longer, just a little.

Then Brother's own voice, right outside the door: "Shizuka? Open the door! Shizuka!"

The ugly feelings jumped out of her mouth before she could stop them. "No! You're a liar! You promised you'd be with me!" _He'll never fix things. There's no excuse for this._

But Brother wasn't making excuses.

"…I was just thinking of myself. My friends had to remind me what was important—the people I love."

Shizuka'd never heard him sound so—small, so humble.

The feeling in her stomach untwisted.

She stumbled across to the door and pulled it open. And then she was hugging the warm solid _weight _of her brother, and collapsing into her mother's arms, and Mother was saying in an oddly gentle voice, "Thank you…Katsuya."

* * *

The suddenness of the visible amazed her—she had forgotten the way movement skips along the edges of eyesight, how color can flare into brightness. 

Now she's back from Domino, though, home from her adventures, she can tell that everything moved at a faster clip around her brother and Yuugi-san—a jog-trot that pulled not just her along, but others as well: Anzu-chan and Bakura-san, Mai-nee-san, Honda-san, Otogi-san.

She has a feeling that if it weren't for her brother, Honda-san would stay still as a rock. But she could be wrong. After all, Honda-san was constantly off-balance during his visits with her in the hospital: his voice falsely firm in response to her queries, his answers treacherous as loose planking. She trusts him absolutely, but not his words.

Otogi-san's face and form matched her mind's-eye picture of him—at once soft and cutting, slender and graceful as his lilting tenor. She isn't so easy with him as she is with Honda-san, but then he's not an easy person—not _restful_ like her brother's friend.

Otogi-san's slips of the tongue around her seemed almost intentional. She reached for them gladly, tired of the cotton-wool in which Honda-san tried to pack her. And underneath the flustering stream of compliments from the black-haired boy, she could hear a simple message, one that pleased her. "_I'm lonely. Will you be my friend?"_

Honda-san doesn't know how to read Otogi-san at all. Which perhaps is just as well—he'd quickly get out of his depth, caught by the undertow in wide sea-green eyes. Or maybe it's the other who would be lost: always so sure of betrayal, Otogi-san might panic and flee from Honda-san's steady brown gaze.

She pulls herself up the ladder, walks dripping towards her towel and the showers, eyes lowered as she passes the flirtatious lifeguard. She is, after all, only fourteen.

-end-


End file.
